How to Make Money with WordPress

WordPress is quite the auspicious project that has provided a million and one money-making opportunities for all and sundry. I mean, wherever you turn your eyes, you’re bound to find bloggers, small businesses, and big corporations taking advantage of the features WordPress provides to push their business agenda forward.

Once just a blogging platform, WordPress now helps seasoned web developers, digital marketers, and even non-technical users to rake in millions in profits. If you can’t think of anyone earning a living from WordPress, just visit Themeforest and check out the best selling Avada WordPress theme, which has over 100K sales at the time of writing. Personally, I eke out a living writing about WordPress and customizing themes.

Do you make money with WordPress? If you said yes, this post will open your eyes to new avenues for earning even more with WordPress. If you said no, then get ready to be blown away as you’ll learn some of the best way of making moolah with WordPress.

Let’s begin with the most obvious route:

Make and Sell WordPress Themes

The ability to change how your site looks at a moments notice, with just a few clicks, in one of the reasons why WordPress is growing in popularity each new day.

As opposed to traditional web design where you had/have to hire a designer to redesign your site from scratch, WordPress gives you the ability to overhaul your design in the time it takes to chomp on a sandwich.

Thanks to WordPress themes, all you need is to upload your theme of choice, activate it, set up menus and widgets and your work is done. You might need to repurpose your content but it’s easy work.

For the web developer looking to make a killing with WordPress, developing themes is one area you want to exploit maximally. The market is growing bigger as more people jump on the WordPress bandwagon, and provided your themes are great, nothing is to stop you from making a living selling themes.

Some theme developers find it profitable to join theme marketplaces such as Themeforest and Mojo Marketplace, but you – just like Nick Roach of Elegant Themes – can choose to sell your wares directly on your website. Both models have their merits and demerits, but if you’re starting out as a theme developer, you should consider joining a marketplace since they already have the traffic and reputation to start you two rungs up the ladder.

The average price of a decent WordPress theme is $60 bucks, so if you can manage to sell one copy each day, you can make about $1,800 in extra income every month. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, you can sell your themes in bundles as well, or offer your customers monthly/yearly subscriptions.

Moving on…

Are you interested in WordPress theme development but don’t know where to start? We have you covered. Here are a few resources to point you in the right direction:

Make and Sell WordPress Plugins

While WordPress themes are all about the design and look of your website, plugins add functionality and features that a client needs but are missing from their theme. Are you a web developer and can identify problems that WordPress users face? Building a plugin to alleviate any of these problems might just be how you make your first coin with WordPress.

WordPress plugins cost lesser than themes, but they are more lucrative since users are always in need of new features but rarely change themes. And just like themes, you can choose to dispense your plugin(s) via a marketplace or on your own website. Just ensure your plugins are above average in terms of quality and adding value to the customer.

WordPress Content Creation

This is probably the easiest way to start making money with WordPress. If you can write with flair, you can start making money today blogging about WordPress, creating eBooks, white papers and web content just to mention a few.

Every moment, there is a beginner out there looking to learn more about WordPress. In addition, there are seasoned WordPress users looking to learn more or find the best deals on themes, hosting and plugins. If you have a good grasp of WordPress, you can help other users create themes and plugins, while directing them to great WordPress products and resources.

Other than that, many WordPress publications accept paid bloggers, with WordPress bloggers such as Tom Ewer earning upwards of $6,000 per month. Check out your favorite WordPress blogs and submit your application, but to skip the research, you can start by checking out the ProBlogger Job Board.

ProBlogger Job Board

Rates vary from $50 to $300 per post, so you ought to get something interesting. I will advice against going for the low-hanging fruit to “earn your stripes” per se. Position yourself for the high-paying gigs from the word go, and you will enjoy your work the more.

Go the extra mile and create an online portfolio where you will offer WordPress content creation services. Guest blog on related WordPress blogs to build traffic and attract clients. This will take time, but with effort, you will start enjoying the rewards, which include great projects with great rates.

If you can curate high quality content for your WordPress readers, you should consider starting your own membership site. You can then charge your readers a one-time or recurring membership fee to access your most valuable content. WordPress offers you a lot of tools and plugins to create any membership site imaginable, so don’t be afraid to chase your dreams.

WordPress Affiliate Marketing

When done right, affiliate marketing can be a fun and lucrative way of making money from WordPress. No wonder it’s one of the most popular ways of earning a living online. All you have to do is promote a product, and earn a commission whenever a transaction takes place.

That said, WordPress is one of the best platforms to run any type of affiliate marketing business. Setting up a website is as easy as ABC, since you can get themes and plugins made specifically for affiliate marketers.

To achieve success in affiliate marketing, build a great platform, get your marketing game on and choose highly converting products.

Affiliate marketing is just like any other form of marketing (or business) so you need to keep things like demand and competition in mind. Other than that, you should always be honest with your readers and only promote products that you’ve tested or used personally.

If affiliate marketing for WordPress sounds like a great idea, you should learn more by checking out the following resources:

Provide Technical WordPress Support

How difficult can it be setting up a WordPress blog? For the perfect beginner, it can be quite the challenging and time consuming task. If you know your way around WordPress fairly well, setting up a WordPress site is as simple as 1, 2, 3.

There are people willing to pay you good money to help with all things technical about WordPress. Be it setting up a blog, SEO, customizing a theme or installing plugins, there’s a huge market ready for the taking.

For instance, some theme developers – and this is sad – don’t provide support after you purchase, say, a theme. If you do some research, you will find many users complaining about technical issues with their themes and plugins. And guess what, the majority of these people don’t care about the free support promised by the developer, they just want their website to work.

If you can position yourself to attract theses disgruntled customers, then you have yourself a business.

You can start a blog to establish yourself as a reputable WordPress consultant/expert. Then offer WordPress support services to the readers you attract with your posts. You should create content focused on the customer you want to attract, as this is important in the SEO landscape of today and days to come.

There are many businesses, an example being WPRoller, built around this idea.

Monetize Your WordPress Site

If you can build a great and high traffic WordPress site with your eyes closed, monetizing is a rewarding method of making money online.

On a related note, if you can build great WordPress sites fast, you can flip them for a profit. There’s a big crowd of people who specialize in online real estate i.e. flipping websites, and they are interested in buying websites that show positive signals for growth.

Websites such as Flippa.com connect sellers to buyers, so you don’t need to worry about promoting your finished websites. The best part is with WordPress, you can build professional websites relatively quick.

Resources on Making Money with WordPress

If you’re excited and serious about making money with WordPress, I can’t think of better posts than the following: